Liveblog: Toronto edges Canadiens 4-3 in OT

Jonathan Drouin’s first goal as a Canadian gave the CH a 3-2 lead 11 minutes into the second period. But 70 seconds later, Patrick Marleau pushed a loose puck past Carey Price to make it 3-3.

Jeff Petry blew a Jonathan Drouin feed past Frederik Andersen to open the scoring, 2:19 into the game. The Canadiens dominated the early going but needed a spectacular Price save on Mitch Marner to keep the visitors off the board, seven minutes in.

Shortly thereafter, a James van Riemsdyk knuckler beat Price from close in to tie it up. That goal had just been announced when Matthews – who’d had a goal disallowed – danced through the Canadiens “defence” and beat Price with a wrister.

On the second wave of a Canadiens power play, 17 minutes in, Alex Galchenyuk beat Andersen with a laser to tie it at 2-2.

497 Comments

Watched the game lat night. Not at all impressed with our play..Yes we outshot them yet our shots for the most part are harmless shots that hit the goalie. What stuck out is how T.O. pass tape to tape 80% of the time and we pass into skates or behind a player while in flight or to other team…when we have the puck its as if its a hot potato. No leadership on this team, no chutspa within the core of this team. Price i believe has changed his game to prevent injury..he is always on his knees…ALL THE TIME. He will never be a money goalie. The people on this board who thinks hes a world class goalie must be the same people that believe we have a chance to win cup….well it gonna go like this….to win a loto you need to buy a ticket to ave a chance…how many have bought that ticket…DID YOU WIN THE JACKPOT… That my friends is how our team is built. No flow no finish no identity no pride = no cup. Il eat crow if we even make the playoffs this year… even coach see’s he got nothing to work with….

Didn’t actually watch the game tonight but a quick look at the stats and comments gives me a lot of optimism. We outshot them again. What’s our streak now, I think we’ve won the shots on goal battle every game now?

One thing doesn’t seem to jibe like the old (soon to be ancient) days though. The Leafs’ fans are not impresssed with their team’s performance tonight but they got a win. They aren’t satisfied with just getting a win, they see room for improvement. The Habs lost and they have a lot of apologists talking about “bad luck” and giving them the pass because they should have won. After all, they did outshoot them. Leafs fans are starting to expect results. Habs fans are either resigned to the fact that the team sucks and nothing in the near or even remote future suggests they wont for a long time, or they make excuses.

Their best player scored tonight so clearly the best thing for Julien to do is keep beating him down. That worked. Keep him unhappy, keep publicly embarrassing him by starting him on the 4th line, and don’t let him take playing time away from guys like Paul Byron.

One thing concerns me a bit, though I’m no negative Nelly. A lot of people feel that our best prospect is Charlie Lindgren. But there is no possibility that he will ever be the Habs #1 goalie unless Price gets hurt. Price’s contract is untradeable, and no matter how well Charlie Lindgren plays in the AHL, he wil never have any value until he does it in the NHL. So he’s redundant in Montreal, and if you are lucky you might get a 5th round pick for an AHL goalie Doesn’t seem like very good asset management to me.

But what do I know, we got them tonight in the shots dept. and we got a point, I’m focusing on the positives.

Can’t wait for the next Orwellian analytics explanation of how Price is actually playing excellent, it’s just the trajectory of the shots, temperature of the ice, alignment of the planets etc. that is fooling us into thinking otherwise.

@whocares — your point about Lindgren is spot on ” A lot of people feel that our best prospect is Charlie Lindgren. ” MB never discussed
what players we could bring in when paying Lindgren a Matt-Murrayesque salary ($500k) and by using the $8.5mil cap space money. We lose Emelin, Markov, Rads, Beaulieu, Andrighetto and replace them with Martinsens, Otts, Kings, etc …
What that Price money and that cap space could have purchased are to me – what separates the Bergevins from the Rutherfords ..

I have been saying for years that Price is over-rated…and now over-paid. We actually outplayed them . Chucky scores and M.B.can’t even crack a smile or do a fist pump. Reminds me of how he hated it when P.K. did anything spectacular. He clearly wants him gone. No doubt we will get some broken down mule in return. M.B. is a moron.

You see, the thing about superstar type players is that some nights, like tonight, when your team is being outplayed and out-checked, it doesn’t matter. Matthews had 3 or 4 chances tonight and scored twice legally, thrice if you count his great hand-eye bunt into the net. Matthews is going to be a great player for a long time.
Price, the Habs superstar, has played poorly behind a rather shaky defense so far.
Once the team hits 9 games and its record is below .500, Mete’s time with the Habs should be over until next season.
Jabba’s horrific deployment of Galchenyuk and his choice of players to start the OT makes me wonder how the bleep he ever won that Cup.

Is Max Pac ever going to go to the net to try and score or is his speciality of firing from the parking lot (as Knuckles would say) the only trick in his bag? So far this year I can count at least a half dozen times when he is coming down the wing, with room, and could make a pass, cycle back, drive the net. Instead he fires it right into the old bread basket. Instant stoppage in play. I know he’s not Guy Lafleur but he does have size and could use that to his advantage. He needs a little Brendan Gallagher in him. Now with 3 games out west, one win in their first eight is staring them right in the face. Those types of starts are very hard to rectify. Good teams find a way to win games like tonight. Bad teams find a way to lose them.

Exactly…..they needed this win before they go on the nightmare southwestern road trip that kills them every year. But now they might be looking at 1-6-1 when they get back. Love the scheduling Bettman. 3 games on the road to start and Chicago first game at home. Ass.

Boys played good for the most part tonight. Mete was awesome. Hemsky was invisible. Chucky got the goal but still not out of the dog house.

I’m seeing in the comments what I’ve been saying for awhile. Price is not playing up to his label of the “best goalie in the world”. He has never stepped up to steal games in the playoffs. Up to now his solid regular season play has overshadowed that fact and given him some slack but now its bleeding into regular season play. His team badly outshot the other, once again, on a night that the Habs were supposed to lose 6-0 if you watch TSN or listen to Leaf homers. It wasn’t the forwards or defence that let the team down (weak back check in OT by Byron, notwithstanding). It was Price’s inability to make the key saves. He’s not making the saves a goalie in his pay grade should be making. Lundqvist, Crawford, Holtby and now Andersen have all outplayed our “star” goalie.

Poor decision to match up a shut down trio against Mathews and Nylander instead of an all out offensive line like Mete, Drouin and Chucky/Patches.

The Canadiens are trying to win with 8.5 million in a Tax free savings account somewhere.
That’s way too much of the Cap not being used.
8.5 gives you two more top notch players.
Not surprised that they’re not winning.

Carey Price our “thoroughbred” struggling to hit .900 and being outplayed by each goalie thus far this season. To think, MB was in such a rush to sign him to that ludicrous contract at age 30. The contract has potentially rendered him un-tradable unless perhaps the Leafs might just want to take a chance. Time to rebuild w/a new GM.

There were a lot of positives tonight. But Price’s poor play and Galchenyuk’s lack of ice time and talented line mates were not among them. What does our coach and GM have against this guy? Isn’t it in the teams best interests to have Galchenyuk happy, confident, and motivated? It truly defies explanation.
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☞ “The deepest sin of the human mind is to believe things without evidence” ~ Aldous Huxley ☜

Listened to the game on the TSN app, followed along a bit here, watched some highlights… Time for a goalie controversy? Yes, that was a knuckleball in OT, but the other goals against were pretty ugly, and a SV% of .818 tonight, and .899 for the season are not acceptable. It would be great if Price could be Pricean, but right now I’d settle for Hellebuyckian.

Plex and Byron had just finished a 2 on one near-miss for a game winner and Toronto came back and scored the other way. Happens all the time in overtime. Not defending coach’s decision to start those two but if they had a scored nobody would be mentioning them starting. Problem with this team number one is on the back end with Benn. Schlemko should help there. Price is obviously not price and hopefully he gets it together which I’m sure he will. Hemsky gone and some more tweeks especially in my opinion the captain on the second line, and things should come around

@Woodzie agree entirely. @Chuck the Habs have won many times over the years without tanking. 1986 and 1993. They did it without a true star–just really good captains and a lot of heart. Man, I miss those days…

Leafs best player (Mathews), played better then Habs best player (Price). Price is off to a slow start, if he doesn’t play better Habs will miss the playoffs. Habs can’t match Leafs talent. Keep in mind what it took to get these players, a lot of losing (tanking).

Where the hell has Carey Price been this year? By far his worst game of the season. I thought Chucky played well… but the Captain was invisible AGAIN! Honestly I think it’s Patches who belongs one the fourth line, not Galchenyuk.

What’s really depressing about this league is that to have any hope of getting a stud offensive game-breaker on your team, you’ve got to pretty much be the worst team in the league. The NHL rewards ineptitude with talent and, eventually, Stanley Cups. Teams are penalized for constantly trying to win. I’d love to have a Matthews/McDavid/Crosby/Ovechkin type of player on the Habs, but it sucks to know that the only way thay can happen is if they become unwatchable.

Yes, so true. The Maple Leafs knew this kid had world class talent, so they tanked their season to be sure, they could choose him (Mathews) first overall. Laine was also available.
All these shit teams are taking advantage of superstar kids.

You’re about to get your wish. Habs are right there..the worst. That game tonite was very painful to watch. I just knew when I saw Matthews out there right off the bat in OT the Habs were done. Despair is the only word that comes to mind when watching this years version of the bleu-blanc-rouge. Who can you turn to that will put a little life in this team and make it interesting to watch? McCarron? Carr? Terry? Lernout? 6 years with this management team can you honestly say they are moving things ahead? I’m watching Junior hockey.

The positive out of this is we scored more than one goal and overall we didn’t play a bad game just some bad luck goals. The Habs outplayed the Leafs for most of the game.

They also played a decent game against the Hawks. Yje wins haven’t come yet but we are close. Schlemko looks to be good I do think he will help the back end. I watched his game in Laval and he made smart passes and good breakouts and reads.

Price is not where he should be and I bet he will be the first to tell you that. I know a lot here before the games started was thinking that the Habs were going to get blown out.

PP got a goal tonight. The lines needs a few more tweaks but even that is getting closer. The worst pairing seems to be whoever is with Benn. Schlemko should upgrade that by a lot.

I am not going to stay and take the time to read all the negative posts that will be spewed. I like to look at the positives rather than dwell on the negatives. If you can move past that yourself how do you expect to move forward without letting it eat you up.

The Habs and coaches have to do the same. It’s a work in progress.

To you from failing hands we throw the torch, be yours to hold it high.

The Leafs were not on there game tonight and they still looked good enough to be the habs.

Weber looks like he is in slow motion.
Benn is trash this year.
Alzner is slower than weber
Plex is a waiste of time taking Chucky’s spot
Price is not the best goalie in the world
and our leader maxi boy, sucks!! an embarrassment to all the other captains that have worn the C